Big Bang Measured

Here's cool news. The European Space Agency's Planck Mission has measured the microwave background radiation left over from the Big Bang and confirmed the universe's age and inflationary model. The telescope was launched in 2009 and spent 15 months mapping the Big Bang's afterglow.

The oldest light in our universe, detected by the Planck mission, was used to generate this map of the universe. The colours represent different temperatures and densities of the cosmic microwave background radiation, representing the seeds of stars and galaxies

Story here .

Haven't read the article, but if that's a map of the universe, what is the black area?

Jeff White wrote: Haven't read the article, but if that's a map of the universe, what is the black area?

Here be monsters.

It's a Mollweide projection of a spherical measurement. The blank part is an artifact of taking three dimensions to two and sticking the result in a rectangle.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mollweide_projection

Man, I wonder how many gajillions of dollars they got to study that.

Look, I could have told you the measurement of The Big Bang much cheaper.

About 22 minutes and episode.

Jeff White wrote: Haven't read the article, but if that's a map of the universe, what is the black area?

Apartheid gone intergalactic?

Jeff White wrote: Haven't read the article, but if that's a map of the universe, what is the black area?

repoman wrote: Man, I wonder how many gajillions of dollars they got to study that.

Probably the same amount of money it costs to operate a Nimitz class carrier for a week.

Schweig! wrote:

repoman wrote: Man, I wonder how many gajillions of dollars they got to study that.

Probably the same amount of money it costs to operate a Nimitz class carrier for a week.

and both equally fucking useless.

Seriously, Loter has been photographed riding round in a dress on the back of Octavian wearing a full unicorn head mask. So really, the site ought to just stop posting threads and articles for a good week for everyone to revel in it.

Knowing the age of the universe is something that I would like to know. Floating a giant piece of metal around the world threatening people, I get less use out of. But spend 10,000 times more on.

sure, it's interesting, but I'd get more satisfaction in solving say world famine, disease and poverty than either

but please reserve some funds to keep Octavian in equine head protection and Loter in the saddle.

That piece of metal also keeps the international trade lanes open fella's. Yes, yes...let's not think about what will happen when the US Navy ceases to be the policeman of the oceans...China will be much more benevolent.

It cost $700 million dollars. The War in Iraq in contrast cost three trillion dollars, but no one cares about that. The disdain for pure research which is where fundamental advances that CHANGE our quality of life is mystifying to me.

The country that leads in this area inherits the future. From the article:

"This is about how humans figure out how the universe works and where it's going," Steinhardt said Thursday. "And it's kind of a raucous time at the moment."

Efstathiou said the Planck results ultimately could give rise to entirely new fields of physics."

This is hardly an either/or proposition. It's about priorities.

Yes we should be working on world famine, disease and poverty. We have enough food to feed the world. But there's a lack of will in seeing it distributed. That doesn't mean we shouldn't seek to advance our knowledge and understand our place in the universe as well.

That's the fundamental nature of our species. Space exploration is an extension of the same drive that colonized North America. We have in a relatively short space of time gone from learning how to use tools, to exploring the stars. It's what we do. When you think about it, everything else is just existing.

THIS gives existence meaning.

its easy to talk about "just existing" and fundamental natures of species while sat at home on a leather sofa eating a horse sized meal costing pennies I find though...

I'm not knocking the research, I'm a physicist myself, but no I don't agree its just about existing. I think its just too easy and lazy to say fuck all the awful shit in the world because none of us can be arsed to make enough effort to make our governments do something about it and hide behind all the comforts and easy living we have, s'all I'm saying man

PS
I was replying to Schweig not you Mike, I mean, if you're going to get all soap boxy about where money is spent, lets send it to where it's most beneficial in the humanitarian sense

ldsdbomber wrote:

Schweig! wrote:

repoman wrote: Man, I wonder how many gajillions of dollars they got to study that.

Probably the same amount of money it costs to operate a Nimitz class carrier for a week.

and both equally fucking useless.

Whoa. Let's stop right here for a second. The Lincoln, Nimitz, Vinson, Roosevelt, Stennis, Washington, Reagan, Truman, and Bush are the single most important military assets in the US armed services. They're used for mass airlifting, they've been used extensively for disaster relief, and they keep the fuckers who want to do bad shit from being able to just up and do it at will.

I don't like being the world's police, but it has its benefits. These carriers are the only things stopping China, North Korea, and formerly, the Soviet Union, from taking over their respective regions.

Nobody in the world can mess with a Nimitz battle group. The Chinese have far more advanced drones than we do and have developed "swarm tactics" to overrun Aegis/Phalanx defensive systems, which may change things, but for the time being, these ships are what keeps the world relatively sane.

If you think the UN is what's keeping the world from continual global war, guess again. It's fear of American might, and the fact that we can project devastating firepower anywhere in the world due to our supercarriers.

/end rant

Mike: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost 3.2-4 trillion dollars.
3,200,000,000,000.

Seems to me that we'd have been better off just blowing the Taliban 2 feet back to the stone age and not messed with Iraq, but that's just me.